Grief Counseling

An excellent book on grief and loss is Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst, written in 1986. The title says it all. Life is an ongoing series of losses, from being born to leaving Mom for kindergarten, graduating from high school and college, losing good health, leaving home as an adult, leaving a marriage, saying goodbye to adult children moving away, moving away yourself, losing a loved one, leaving a job or career, beginning retirement, and dying.

Some losses are more manageable than others. We accept them with sadness and move on. What makes a loss manageable is very individual and depends on many factors, including its seriousness, our over-all support system, our underlying physical and psychological health, and our spiritual grounding.

Grief is our natural reaction to these ‘necessary losses’ which we manage in our own way and on our own time table. Various manifestations include:

• Pervasive sadness
• Tearfulness
• Irritability and anger
• Withdrawal for normal activities/isolation
• Numbness
• Physical symptoms such as achiness, headaches, fatigue, nausea, weight loss or gain, insomnia or sleeping too much
• The feeling of ‘unreality’, being in a dream, disconnected from normal life

When grief is very intense, long-lasting, or disabling, counseling is indicated and is very helpful. Sometimes the situation is so overwhelming, as in the death of a spouse or child, psychotherapy and medication are needed immediately. And even when the loss is one of choice, as in divorce or retirement, there will still be grief, and counseling is helpful in processing these losses and accompanying change. People are sometimes surprised by the power of their sadness from expectable losses and changes.

An important principle in grief recovery is to not judge yourself, or let anyone else judge you and the way you are grieving. I hear this all the time: people feeling or being judged (or judging themselves) by the way they are experiencing or handling their emotions around the loss. People are actually told that they should be moving on, getting over it, or some other judgemental perspective. Research has clearly demonstrated that it takes years to recover from a significant loss; even then one’s life is forever changed. I remember when my dog died, a dog I didn’t even know I loved because he was the ‘children’s dog’. I could hardly get my breath for a week after he died, and for the next two years anytime someone brought up issues related to their dog, I would tear up. I was surprised by how strongly I was affected by the death of Sundance, and at the time was very judgemental of myself for having so much grief.

When in doubt, reach out. Call for help. Grief can be very intense and disabling. Reaching out for help is called for when the grief feels like too much or too long or too interfering in one’s life – or when you cannot feel any emotion and can not move on. Psychotherapy can be very helpful in moving through and surviving a difficult loss. In fact, psychotherapy can help people in grief and crisis move beyond crisis resolution to a new level of well being and joy.